Standards Sundays: Grade 5 written and oral English language conventions

Bits and pieces waiting to be put together.

This set of standards is basically the nuts and bolts to writing and speaking English. All the little things that make English what it is. My current class does something called "Standards Plus," which is one of the most boring things on the face of the planet. But effective. Because we work on one concept for eight mini-lessons (one each day), and then we do an assessment to summarize.

I hate teaching Standards Plus, to be honest. But it's fifteen minutes that is worth it because students are less daunted by writing assignments. They can handle the parts, it's just putting it all together that gets tricky. Without the parts though, they wouldn't have any place to begin.

These standards are:

a) correctly using prepositional phrases, appositives, and independent and
dependent clauses.
b) correctly using transitions and conjunctions to connect ideas.
c) correctly using irregular verbs, modifiers, and pronouns.
d) correct usage of colons and quotation marks.
e) correct capitalization.
f) spelling and using affixes, roots, contractions, and syllable constructions.